NEW DELHI:Tikona Digital Networks (TDN), which owns 20 MHz of 4G spectrum in five key circles including Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh East and West, will launch 4G-LTE based broadband services in 30 cities in five telecom circles during the first half of 2016.

We just launched a commercial roll out of our 4G home Broadband Services in the city of Varanasi as our pilot launch. We are already adding about 1200 new customer addition, which is roughly 2.5% market share per month, which is quite cheerful. It may go even higher once we roll out our marketing campaign. With the campaign this number should double if not more. We can sustain it for atleast 2 quarters.

We are focusing on both home and office (enterprise) customers for our 4G broadband services.

By when can we expect commercial 4G service launch by Tikona in other circles?

We will launch in other markets in our 5 LTE circles during early 2016 after booking the learnings from the Varanasi pilot. The first quarter of 2016 should see next series of launches in another 30 cities. The construction of network roll out would commence during first quarter 2016.

What are your investment plans?

Right now, a majority of the investment is going towards creation of the network, and procuring customer premise equipments, along with operational expenses.

Which is the telecom equipment vendor Tikona has selected to deploy 4G network?

Tikona has selected ZTE as technology partner to supply end-to-end TD-LTE equipment in its LTE circles for building high speed broadband network. Under the contract ZTE will deploy TD-LTE switching and radio equipment in its LTE circles where Tikona has the 4G license.

We have also selected Telenet Systems for supplying outdoor LTE CPE which is using Sequans chipset. What is your pricing strategy for the 4G-based broadband service?

We plan to offer GBs at a price that is one-fifth of current 3G prices so as to provide a satisfying user experience to multi user, multi device homes. We plan to maintain the pricing advantage on an on-going basis.What is your go-to market strategy for 4G home broadband services?

We plan to build a powerful brand by delivering a high quality customer experience via extensive marketing. We plan to create blanket coverage in the cities/ towns where we roll out our service, so as to be able to serve near 100% of the households and offices.

We will launch a disruptive 10 Mbps product which offers 5 to 10X higher speeds than the prevailing DSL /3G based products.

Our strategy is to create sufficient data traffic capacity to ensure that we can serve the ever increasing demand for data. Current average consumption is around 20 GB per home per month. We are building a capacity that can handle multiples of the current average consumption so as to be able to provide it as the demand shows up.

These are largely underserved markets having just BSNL DSL connections. By and large we are the only alternative. Against their product, out product is very disruptive, and yet giving GBs, which are highly affordable. That should create very potent combination for product pull to be created and large demand can be induced.

How do you look at the competition with other Indian 4G telcos?

All the other 4G spectrum holders are large telcos and are going to use the spectrum for the mobile. We are the only operator, which is focused on using the spectrum for rolling out home broadband service. They are not our competitors.

Do you have plans to enter the mobile telephony market?

We currently have an ISP license. Spectrum and license have been delinked, and we have the option of obtaining Unified Access Service License (UASL), if we decide to enter the mobile telephony space.

How has been the performance of the company in the last one year?

The performance has been good and satisfactory. We have scaled from 200,000 customers to 300,000 customers in last one year. We are clocking annualized exit revenue in the region of Rs 350 crore.

There is an indoor penetration challenge attached with the 2300 MHz band. How do you plan to address that?

We understand, and that’s why we are using outdoor CPE to circumvent the challenge of indoor penetration. They are placed on the rooftop or balcony at the customer premise and from there it can be connected with a fiber cable that goes into the Wi-Fi router, making the home a Wi-Fi hotspot.

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